Omise rival Cashaa

Cashaa is a peer-to-peer payments and remittances product built in Mumbai, housed in the Level 39 Accelerator in London, and now registered in Estonia for the launch of its ICO on October 5. The dissolving national boundaries in its footprint is typical of the blockchain technology underpinning Cashaa.

CEO and co-founder Kumar Gaurav, currently based in Palo Alto, USA, tells Tech in Asia that the pre-ICO activity of bringing in influential investors started this week ahead of the public launch.

Unlike many ICOs based on whitepapers, points out Gaurav, Cashaa has a proven product for remittances or money transfers between England and India, as well as Nigeria and Indonesia. It also has a digital wallet and acts as an exchange for cryptocurrency.

The way its remittance works does not require users to know anything about cryptocoins. They can simply use their national currency to transfer money. A trader on the platform sells bitcoin in exchange for the fiat currency in the country where the transfer originates. Another trader in the receiving country buys the bitcoin, paying for it in the local currency there. This goes to the receiver, who need not know that a bitcoin trade powers the money transfer and exchange rate.

This can bring the power of cryptocoins to 99.99 percent of the people in the world who have no clue about them, says Gaurav. It reduces the cost and time taken for remittances, which are huge in countries like India and Indonesia with a large diaspora across the world sending money home.

The money it raises from the ICO will help Cashaa get licences in more countries to increase its remittance channels. But remittances is just the first large use case to demonstrate the value and robustness of the underlying blockchain technology, explains Gaurav. Post-ICO, Cashaa will expand its repertoire to become a broader blockchain-based financial services platform, with products for lending, cross-border investments, Read More.